Wife blames army drugs for husband's suicide

JANE Casperson-Quinn’s world came crashing down on March 11, 2006, when she opened the door of her spare bedroom to find her husband, a retired Army major, had taken his own life in the home they shared with their two daughters.

Jane Casperson-Quinn says the drug changed the personality of her late husband[PH]

The couple, who met as teenagers, had already seen their lives turned upside down after Major Cameron Quinn took the controversial antimalarial drug Lariam.

The drug, generic name mefloquine, has been given the strictest health warnings in the US and is issued to American troops only if all alternatives fail. However, the Ministry of Defence routinely gives it to 2,500 troops every year as a first-line defence against malaria.

Earlier this month the Sunday Express revealed that Major General Julian Thompson, who led 3 Commando in the battle to retake the Falkland Islands, suffered such severe hallucinations after taking Lariam for a trip to Botswana that his wife, a nurse, had banned it.

The warning came too late for Cameron Quinn and his family. The infantry major had first taken the drug before being sent on a routine live ammunition exercise in Kenya.

His personality altered irrevocably. When he returned to the family home in Scotland he was plagued with unaccountable mood swings and violent nightmares.

Cameron was always a loving, gentle family man, devoted to me and his daughters but his personality was changed from the time he first took Lariam

Jane Casperson-Quinn

Speaking to the Sunday Express last night Jane, 44, who now works in Australia as a lecturer in veterinary medicine, said: “Cameron was always a loving, gentle family man, devoted to me and his daughters but his personality was changed from the time he first took Lariam.” Recalling the day of his death, she added: “When Cameron woke up that morning he told me he’d had Lariam dreams. I knew he’d been restless in the night. He was his usual off-colour self.

“I’d booked riding lessons for our two girls for that afternoon so I left Cameron at home. When I came back, he wasn’t there. He’d gone to the pub to watch the rugby with his dad. He was a great rugby fan.”

Hours later Jane looked for him at their home. “I’d heard him moving in the spare room earlier on. He had all his Army equipment in there. I went in and I found him. He was already dead.”

Horrifically, their daughters, then aged eight and five, were with Jane and saw what their father had done. “He had given absolutely no indication and left no note,” said Jane. “I searched that house from top to ­bottom. I found absolutely nothing. I couldn’t understand why he’d done what he’d done. He was 35.”

She believes Lariam was to blame. When he first started taking it she had been concerned but he told her he had suffered some odd dreams but nothing worse.

His mood “significantly darkened” after he returned to Scotland. “I told him to stop taking it immediately and to report it. He did stop taking it but didn’t report it. He said there would be too many problems.” The mood swings immediately lessened but nightmares continued. “I would ask him what the dreams were about but he refused to tell me. When I did press him, he told me they were too unpleasant or violent and they included me and the ­children.

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“They weren’t about his active service. They were sadistic and ­violent and very upsetting. He wouldn’t go any further. They were too horrible.”

Under Scottish law there was no public inquest but the procurator ­fiscal investigated and told Jane he suspected Cameron died after a ­psychotic episode.

The nightmares that plagued Major Quinn have also been reported by Lt Col Andrew Marriott. He was given Lariam in 2003, before being sent to Sierra Leone to train local troops and says it gave him nightmares so violent and disturbing he is too ashamed to discuss them.

Lt Col Marriott, 58, who retired from the Army in 2008, said: “We had to take it three weeks ahead of deployment in case we had bad ­psychotic reaction. There was no choice.

“They warned there may be ­serious side effects, such as very vivid dreams and loss of balance but that they would only be temporary. They weren’t temporary. Lariam has left me with a chronic legacy called Nightmare Disorder.

“They also claimed that around only one in 20,000 would have a bad reaction. I don’t know where they got those figures from. They are far from true.”

Only when Lt Col Marriott landed in Sierra Leone did he discover the real extent of the problem. He said: “I was personally aware of a number of people who were throwing away their Lariam and risking malaria rather than taking it because of the loss of temper, memory and balance and vivid dreams.”

By September 2003, nine months after being sent to Sierra Leone, he was experiencing four or five nightmares every night and almost uncontrollable outbursts of rage.

“Everyone who knows me will tell you I am a calm and centred person by nature but there were three or four occasions when I felt on the edge of a rage that I had never ­experienced before in all my life,” said Lt Col Marriott, who now lives in North Yorkshire.

Although he managed to keep his anger in check others were not so lucky, he said. “There ­certainly were acts of ­violence among the officer ­community that I have never seen anywhere else in the world and I’ve served in the Balkans, Georgia and the Middle East.”

Last year US Special Forces were banned from using Lariam, with an order warning: “Hallucinations and psychotic behaviour can occur and continue for months or years after mefloquine use.”

The directive added that cases of suicidal thoughts and suicide had been reported.

An MoD spokesman said: “All our medical advice is based on the ­current guidelines set out by Public Health England. Based on this expert advice, the MoD continues to prescribe mefloquine (Lariam) as part of the range of malaria prevention treatments recommended, which help us to protect our personnel from this disease.”